


The Mother of Invention

by Maedlin



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse Not Between Tagged Pairs, Abusive Relationships, An Overabundance of Relevant Tony Stark Tags Exist, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Tony Stark, Bisexual Tony Stark, Deliberately Cautious Tagging, Discussion of Abortion, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Howard Stark is Not the Devil Incarnate, Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Parent Tony Stark, Sex Positive, Strong Female Characters, Tony Stark Does What She Wants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maedlin/pseuds/Maedlin
Summary: Tony is fifteen. It is 1989 and she set foot on a college campus for the first time a little more than two months ago.No matter the universe, no matter the gender, Tony is asked to grow up fast and is destined to take the world by storm. For all that single swapped chromosome changes her life, it often changes surprisingly little.Or: The one where #IronMom absolutely becomes a thing, because Tony refuses to conform to society's expectations of who and what she should be.





	1. Lipstick and Nylons

**Author's Note:**

> Never thought I'd see the day where I wrote an always-female Tony fic. But then I read this really interesting analysis of Tony Stark's character being very heavily female-coded through his various appearances in film, and it got me thinking... and here we are. When I started writing this from the outline, I pictured this being another two-shot, with the first chapter covering up to the first Iron Man movie. That... did not happen. 
> 
> I'm estimating three chapters, but it could be a couple more depending on the response and if my muse goes wild with the later plot points I have outlined like it did in this chapter.
> 
> WARNING: This story starts off with scene that deals with sexual assault on college campuses. It is neither explicit nor graphic, but the character involved is both underage and very clearly not in a position to consent. Proceed with caution, folks.

_“Oh, Susan!” said Jill. “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly site too keen on being grown-up.” — The Chronicles of Narnia_  

 

+++

 

Tony is fifteen.

 

It is 1989; Tony is a little more than two months into her Sophomore year at MIT. She set foot on a college campus for the first time a little more than two months ago and though she’ll never admit it, she is in over her head socially. Perhaps in another lifetime, she would be a he. Perhaps in another lifetime, Tony might have had the ‘advantage’ of looking their age to act as a thin layer of security. In this lifetime, with this Tony, however? She has been able to pass as a slightly-young looking adult for more than a year now. She is 5’4; puberty hit her twelve-year-old self like a hurricane, and she came out the other side _hot_ instead of _cute_.

 

Tony is fifteen.

 

To date, her only relationship experiences comes from a bit of fooling around in the bleachers with a Freshman her Senior year of high school. She’s a genius; she understands the mechanics. She’s certainly thought about it.

 

Tony is not on the Pill. Thoughts can’t get you pregnant; there’s no need.

 

_(It is interesting, perhaps, to note the age of consent for women in Massachusetts is sixteen, but eighteen for men.)_

 

She projects confidence as she arrives at the Alpha Sig Halloween party. Skin-tight jeans in lieu of a mini-skirt is her sole concession to the late-autumn chill of the evening. Her costume is meant to emulate Rosie the Riveter, though she’ll admit to taking a bit of artistic liberty with the three inch stilettos paired with the bold red painted on her lips and dominating her artfully-placed polka-dot scarf. Combine it with the makeup? Tony might easily be mistaken for the nineteen or twenty expected of an underclassmen.

 

It’s a transformation that she’s had plenty of practice with, though her day-to-day life requires far less makeup to achieve the same end. She’s been using subtle tricks to pull together an ‘effortless’, ‘natural’ look that makes her look older— _better—_ for nearly two years now. She’d learned when she was thirteen, on the heels of a particularly vicious fight with her mother. Tony didn’t want to visit a professional stylist for hair and makeup before Every. Damn. Society. Function. She was dragged to throughout the year anymore. It was ridiculous; a waste of time.

 

Maria… hadn’t been fond of the idea, nor the perceived corresponding impact it would have on the family’s ‘reputation.’ But Tony, too, could be stubborn when she wanted. After a protracted battle consisting of weeks of sniping coupled with a few spectacular blow-ups, Maria and Tony managed to reach a compromise.

 

Tony could lose the makeup artist, but not the hair stylist, on the condition that she could first prove to Maria that her own hands were on par with a professional.

 

Perhaps she thought it was a stalling tactic. Tony all but lived in her garage, had very little tolerance for lessons or tasks she deemed unimportant and irrelevant.

 

Maria probably thought Tony wouldn’t have the patience to learn.

 

She should have known that Tony would never back down from a challenge.

 

Two weeks coupled with a few hours of expert tutelage. Thousands of dollars of face creams, eyeliner, and rouge applied and critically examined only to be immediately removed.

 

December 23rd, 1987, Tony attended the annual Military Christmas Gala with the fruits of her labor completing a look elegant beyond her years.

 

She regained a hour of once-wasted time before the gala (and the dozens that would follow) in the bargain. To keep the peace with her mother, Tony was willing to put up with the intricate hairstyles and the tailored, one-of-a-kind dresses in exchange. The corresponding time commitments, while inconvenient, were less easily shed.

 

_(That didn’t stop her from going the same route with her hair a year later. The tailor, unfortunately, remained. At least Taylor was entertaining.)_

 

Her first weekend at MIT, Tony trades in subtle lip gloss for her unapologetically eye-catching red lipstick.

 

It’s amazing what small amounts of precisely applied makeup can do. She is still carded in most places, but the fake ID she produces is very rarely even cursorily questioned.

 

Perhaps that makes what happens the night of the party unsurprising. Explains it. All but guaranteed the eventuality.

 

Or perhaps her apparent age doesn’t matter. Maybe it would have happened anyways.

 

Because Tony is Tony and Tony finds herself in over her head with no surface in sight.

 

Tony doesn’t remember much of anything past ten o’clock beyond flashes. Colors. Disjointed sounds, smells and sensations.

 

_(The scent of bergamot mixed with sandalwood and saffron will put her on edge for years to come.)_

 

Tony may not remember what happens that night, but her body will. She wakes up the next morning sore all over. Wakes up to faint bruises coloring her thighs and waist.

 

She finds her pants. Wipes away the smudged makeup and buttons her shirt. Hides the mess of her hair under her dirtied, stained bandanna.

 

Tony grabs her heels and walks home with her head held high.

 

Life goes on.

 

_(She ignores the spike of anxiety that comes every time someone tries to hand her things now.)_

 

_(Doesn’t consider just why she’ll chug the remainder of her drinks no matter how full the cup before she’ll set it down.)_

 

+++ 

 

By Thanksgiving, Tony begins to suspect something is horribly wrong.

 

_(It was her first time. What are the odds?)_

 

By Christmas, she confirms it is.

 

_(A Stark never listens to the odds.)_

 

She tells her mom, because what else can she do? She is fifteen and Starks don’t get scared, but maybe just this once she can be excused the indiscretion?

 

Mom tells dad. Maria tells Howard, and Howard handles everything.

 

By the New Year, it is over.

 

Tony quietly receives an abortion on December 27th, 1989. The doctor is an elderly gentleman; before Roe v. Wade, he’d gained a name in certain circles for providing “safe ways of inducing a miscarriage” to women and girls in need.

 

He’d retired in the late seventies; agrees to work with Tony as a personal favor for Howard.

 

There is no paper trail. Five people in the world know what happened, and none plan to share. To all the world, it is as if nothing ever happened.

 

Tony will never learn of the DNA sample Howard takes from the aborted fetus. Will never learn of his dubious and highly illegal usage of SHIELD resources to track down the ‘father.’ Will never hear the story of Matt Healy, MIT freshman and Alpha Sig pledge.

 

She has no reason to know or care about the way poor Matt gets involved with the wrong crowd the summer of 1990. The disastrous end the summer will have for him, culminating in twenty-five-to-life in a federal penitentiary. The prosecutor throws the book at him on a litany of offenses, ranges from possession and obstruction of justice to involuntary manslaughter.

 

Howard is ruthless. Unforgiving. A hard man who is not a good father or even a good man and has long resigned himself to the fact. A drunken asshole that has no idea how to relate his daughter. A man that has no idea how to talk to Antonia Elena Stark, his heir and legacy and greatest creation all wrapped in an incomprehensible, too-female package.

 

_(Howard does not articulate the sentiment, perhaps, but Tony is not the only Stark who chooses vengeance should they fail to protect.)_

 

_(Tony will certainly never know that he did it for her.)_

 

Starks are skilled with secrets.

 

Tony herself most of all. She learned from the best, after all.

 

The man that performs the procedure will die peacefully in his sleep of natural causes fifteen months later. Jarvis will follow shortly thereafter. And the number of people that know Tony was once pregnant, even if only for seven short _(impossibly long)_ weeks will drop to three.

 

_December 27th._

 

Seventeen months before she will lose him for good, it is Jarvis who drives her to her appointment at the makeshift home clinic.

 

_(She is fifteen, and legally she cannot drive herself.)_

 

(Tony likes to believe Jarvis would’ve been there either way.)

 

The procedure is little more than a quick shot and a few hours of monitoring. This early along, the fetus likely wouldn’t have even had a heartbeat yet.

 

Jarvis holds her hand the entire time.

 

_December 28th._

 

Tony abandons the long, silky locks that saw her through childhood. In cutting her hair, she abandons one of the few parts of her appearance that Maria consistently seemed to approve of in favor of an extremely short and spiky pixie.

 

It will become one of her most iconic features.

 

Beyond that, Tony returns to MIT a week later as though nothing had happened. She puts the incident behind her and avoids thinking on the matter any further.

 

_(Tony is an excellent liar. Particular when the only person she’s trying to deceive is herself.)_

 

She begins taking prescription birth control.

 

Life goes on.

 

+++

 

Sixteen, and she’s gained a reputation for herself as rather… promiscuous. Liberal with her affections. Loose.

 

_(Whore. Slut. Skank.)_

 

Early January in her second year at MIT, she meets Sunset Bain at a party.

 

The party itself is unremarkable. Perhaps the only good thing that can be said about the lackluster event is that at least it is put out of its misery quickly.

 

Tony herself is not even pleasantly buzzed. When the event becomes dry and consequently begins to die, she finds herself alone and at odds on what to do with herself.

 

Then she quite literally stumbles upon Sunset. The two get to talking. Begin to wander vaguely in the direction of Sunset’s apartment. Then Sunset is inviting her inside, and Tony is pressing her against the wall in a kiss that Sunset only deepens further.

 

Pulling off clothes. Bodies pressing together. Sunset’s hand drifting below Tony’s waist. Tony moaning in response, the sounds muffled by Sunset’s lips.

 

Tony is remarkably sober considering her general habits with such things. The high from their intensifying intimacy is a more than adequate substitute.

 

And then they’re in bed together.

 

That evening Tony learns what it feels like to have sex with a woman. What it feels like to orgasm. In the afterglow, she wonders why she ever even bothered with men in the first place, falling asleep content and comfortable in a way she rarely manages. The next morning, Sunset’s soft smile and gleefully chaotic bed-head are waiting to greet her.

 

(Not that Tony has much of a leg to stand on this one. Her own hair is certainly ample in that regard.)

 

Tony smiles back.

 

Just like that, Tony has a girlfriend.

 

The sex is amazing, but their relationship is so much more than that. There’s dates and hand-holding. Long evenings spent wrapped together watching movies or TV shows or even just talking. Things Tony never knew that she wanted before Sunset. Things she never knew were options.

 

Six weeks later, Tony thinks she might be learning what love is.

 

Sunset takes to calling her Neenie over Tony’s ~~half-hearted~~ vehement protests. It’s the first time she’s been given a pet name all her own, and despite its childish nature she can’t help the small smile that forms each time she hears it. Like the cuddling and the talking and the soft kisses, she can no longer imagine life with it. Without Sunset.

 

Winter gives way to spring and Sunset is a Senior preparing for her graduation. Tony is already fantasizing about the logistics of their relationship after Sunset leaves MIT, imagining weekends spent visiting Sunset in New York.

 

It all comes crashing down three weeks before commencement.

 

She wakes at four in the morning alone in her bed. The duo had crashed only a couple hours ago at Tony’s place after a evening spent in silent solidarity preparing for finals.

 

(Well. Sunset is preparing for finals. Tony is working on an idea she’d latched onto recently, an algorithm that could _learn,_ and for weeks now she’s felt on the verge of a breakthrough that hasn’t come. It’s both maddening and utterly engrossing in a way that few problems are for Tony.)

 

She hears Sunset’s muffled voice on the other side of her slightly-ajar bedroom door. A sliver of light shines through. Tony is confused to hear her on the phone at this hour, wonders vaguely if something bad has happened... but Sunset doesn’t _sound_ sad. If anything, she sounds frustrated.

 

Tony slips out of bed and creeps towards the door with half-formed notions of a surprise hug or gentle kiss. Her hand reaches for the doorknob only to freeze half-way when she hears her name—Stark, not Neenie. Sunset hasn’t called her _Tony_ in weeks, has _never_ called her Stark and certainly not in such a disparaging tone. The closest was their last major fight, when Tony had disappeared into her badge-protected lab for four days straight without warning. Even then, Sunset’s voice had never completely lost the faint echoes of her ~~love~~ fondness for Tony.

 

A heavy feeling begins to creep over her. Her gut clenches as she tries to rationalize what she’s hearing, _(Or mishearing? Please, let that be all.)_

 

A thousand possible benign explanations run through her mind. They are only just as quickly dismissed as Sunset continues to speak. The same gentle, melodious voice that fondly calls her Neenie and whispers compliments to make her blush, the same voice that talks about post-graduation plans and said _I love you_ and Tony had believed her...

 

That same voice is now laced with mockery and disdain. Instead of kindness and compassion, Sunset speaks of manipulation and deceit. She describes her ongoing efforts to decipher the scribbled shorthand of Tony’s sketches and schematics. Complains of Tony’s _clinginess,_ of how Sunset would ‘almost feel bad for her with how pathetic she gets, if only the neediness wasn’t so annoying.’ Sunset talks about how _inconvenient_ Tony is, how there’s a direct correlation between how interesting Tony finds something and how quickly her writing deteriorates into something no one else can read. How generally, the things Tony finds most interesting are also the bits of information that are most valuable. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for Sunset to be able to decipher the problem only to lose the thread at whatever solution Tony might have found.

 

Her girlfriend speaks derisively of the same ‘learning program’ idea that she’d happily listened to Tony spend twenty minutes rambling about just two days prior.

 

 _“I deserve an Oscar, seriously. It’s hardly_ easy _to pretend to tolerate her incessant bullshit.”_

 

Tony’s not crying.

 

(She’s too numb for that.)

 

Just like that, it’s over. Just like that, the relationship she’d poured her heart and soul and _self_ into is gone. No, worse. You can’t lose something that never really existed outside your own head, can you?

 

The revelation leaves Tony unmoored and adrift.

 

Later, there will come the yelling. The five stages of grief, the recriminations and empty wine bottles thrown at walls.

 

Later, there will come her father’s judgement. She’ll finally have managed to surpass his expectations. _After all_ , he’d say, _I never once imagined you could sink so far below my expectations of you._ With it will come the dozens of meetings with the teams tasked with running damage control. Prepares for the upcoming public relations disaster, when the leak inevitably gets out and the press discovers _just how_ said leak occurred.

 

The stolen data is only a fraction of the potential damage Tony’s _gullibility,_ Tony’s _carelessness,_ could have on Stark Industries.

 

But in this moment, with Tony barely clothed listening to the worst of her insecurities come to life and _more,_ there is only the shock. In this moment, Tony thinks and feels nothing at all.

 

+++

 

Tony turns seventeen three days after commencement. She spends the evening in her room at Stark Mansion, nursing a bottle of wine interspersed with shots of something heavier.

 

Howard has banned her from her garage. In fact, she’s banned from any and all technical projects and related paraphernalia ‘until you learn to keep your mouth and _your fucking legs_ closed.’

 

She has never hated her father more.

 

(He has never found it more impossible to reach a daughter he's never understood.)

 

Her mother is little better. Of the two, Maria is just religious enough to react poorly to her daughter’s _deviancy._ It’s clear she considers the consequences to be just desserts; she circles so far beyond disapproving that she’s landed at entirely dismissive.

 

The dismissal comes with its own unique expression of disdain in pointed commentary and sharp, stinging words. They pierce further than Howard's drunken ravings ever would.

 

Slowly, painfully, time passes.

 

Howard relents after two weeks and allows Tony to return to her garage. She starts to leave her room for more than bathroom trips and pantry raids.

 

The renewed energy leaves her restless. Jittery.

 

It’s early July when Tony finally gives in to the need to simply _go._ She throws a few changes of clothes and her active graphing notebooks, tosses them in the backseat, and takes off.

 

Her parents let her; if anything they seem almost approving.

 

A few days later, she arrives at the family’s long-neglected lake house in Northern Michigan a few days later. The property is well-maintained, especially given that it’s been unoccupied—likely even unvisited—by the Stark family since before Tony was even born.

 

The change in scenery helps, but in some ways it also makes everything worse. She spends days wallowing in a renewed depressive funk, staring out at the water from the balcony for hours on end with everything and nothing in mind.

 

She’s been there nine days when a figure on the beachfront below startles her back into reality once more. She’s curious, can’t help herself really. Their nearest neighbor is some three-quarters of a mile down the beach, and she has no idea who even lives there.

 

She dons a swimsuit and heads down to meet a twenty-year-old Tiberius Stone.

 

_Ty._

 

The less said about him and their ensuing brief, toxic fling, the better.

 

Tony leaves Michigan just that much more jaded. Just that touch more bitter.

 

Tony’s done with the whole ‘committed relationship’ thing. Turns out, trust is only an invitation to pain and betrayal.

 

Tony needs no one but herself.

 

Life, as ever, goes on.

 

She returns for one final undergraduate semester at MIT with dozens of friends and none. Names and faces blur together in a faceless, emotionless mass around her. She sleeps in a different bed every time she goes out. She goes out most nights.

 

Halloween is the only exception. That evening, she stays in her apartment and drinks alone.

 

Or at least, she starts off in her apartment. At some point, Tony and her handle of vodka migrate to the machine shop she’s all but officially claimed as her own at MIT.

 

Tony comes to Sunday morning with far more than just the hangover and empty bottle she expect.

 

She wakes up to DUM-E.

 

She doesn’t remember naming it, but it he refuses to respond to anything else. And Tony knows—she _knows,_ okay—that she’s just anthropomorphizing DUM-E when she begins to assign emotions to the ever-expanding range of beeps and gestures he makes as they interact over the next several weeks, but…

 

_He looks so sad when she doesn’t visit the lab for a few days._

_So gleeful as he hovers beside her as she works, always eager to contribute and assist with the smallest details involved in every project._

 

DUM-E is nothing more than the the byproduct of whatever bit of insight her drunken self had latched onto and implemented from the half-finished algorithms she spent months ruminating on.

 

And yet.

 

_He physically droops when Tony does visits the lab but fails to assign the robotic arm any corresponding work._

 

DUM-E is a helper bot. A learning lab assistant; the centerpiece of her master’s thesis in Mechanical Engineering.

 

He latches onto her, and Tony can’t help but latch back. Pathetic, perhaps, that the only thing that genuinely seems to like her is a robot she built herself and _programmed_ to help her. She can’t bring herself to break that forming bond either way.

 

(Perhaps an implicit inability to leave is the prerequisite behind a willingness to stick around Tony for anything approaching the long-term.)

 

DUM-E is family. More her family that her parents ever managed.

 

_(Will ever manage.)_

 

It’s the weekend of Thanksgiving when the burgeoning bond crystallizes into an enduring connection. Howard is still refusing to speak with her more than absolutely necessary. Maria makes it clear that Tony would be best served remaining away for the holiday.

 

Instead of falling into the blacked-out state of inebriation she’s become all too familiar with, three-quarters of the way into her first bottle of wine of the evening, she makes her way to her workshop.

 

_Might as well drown in science instead of liquor for once._

 

She snaps out of her laser-focused engineering fugue to the shrill sounds of DUM-E’s ~~concerned~~ beeping. She turns, taking in the robotic arm’s flailing gesticulations.

 

It takes her a very confusing, very long minute to figure out what has happened.

 

DUM-E accidentally scraped her with a piece of scrap metal while attempting to move it to the rubbish bin.

 

And all she can think in that moment is—

 

_The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb._

 

(And really, hadn’t Jarvis been the one to bandage all her childhood scrapes as well?)

 

+++

 

It is 1991.

 

Tony is on track to graduate in December with a handful of concurrent degrees, including the Masters in Mechanical Engineering.

 

She and her parents have reconciled to the point where she’s returned home for the Christmas holidays.

 

Ultimately, this seems to just mean that Howard is now able to dismiss his daughter to her face once more.

 

Howard won’t be at her graduation.

 

“Perhaps,” he tells her, “I’ll be able to spare the time when that becomes a proper doctorate.”

 

To him, a 4.0—a dual degree, a double major, and a Masters all at once—is nothing. Why had she ever foolishly imagined otherwise?

 

Despite their strained relationship, Tony still holds out hope that Maria will be in the audience on December 20th when she walks across the stage.

 

She’ll never know if mom would have been there. If dad would have gone to her PhD hooding ceremony.

 

On December 16th, she loses them both.

 

 _Car crash,_ they say.

 

This, on an empty road in reasonably clear conditions. This, with a man who’s never wrecked a vehicle his his life. With a man who flew temporarily appropriated Allied planes into Nazi territories during the War.

 

 _The funeral will be closed-casket,_ they say. Tony is many things, but she is more than capable of filling in the truths behind the comforting ~~lies~~ words.

 

She knowswhat happened. And sure, her relationship with her mother was often tumultuous. Tony had still loved her. Loved them both, really. She’s excused Howard for a lot over the years, but she’s not sure that she’ll ever be able to forgive Howard for choosing to drive drunk that evening with his wife in the passenger seat. 

 

_He killed her mom._

 

She remembers very little of the weeks that follow the accident. She attends the funeral the same day she should be receiving her degree. She makes a point to never be sober. A small part of her that she tries to ignore warns her that the behaviors are liable to drive her to an early grave too.

 

_Did that even bother her these days?_

 

Tony comes out the other side not long after the New Year when Obadiah Stane stages an intervention.

 

He takes one look at her sorry state and hesitantly opens his arms for a hug. Years of pent up grief and stress that she never allowed herself to express are released in an ugly torrent of broken sobbing. Tony collapses into him. He holds her. Comforts her. Is there for her in a way that literally no one else alive is.

 

Tony was never particularly close to the man growing up. On the rare occasions they’d met, he’d been just another business associate of her father’s. Albeit one that doubled as Howard’s closest friend, for whatever value of friend her father could be said to have allowed.

 

It is then, Tony thinks, that Obadiah Stane becomes simply Obie. She’s hesitant at first, but as the years go by and he continues to stick around and continues to prove himself reliable… she relaxes somewhat. For seventeen years, he will never give her a reason to doubt him.

 

Life goes on.

 

+++

 

Tony is nearly eighteen. Obi is running Stark Industries in her stead until she turns twenty-one. Right now, she’s taking the three-year period for the blessing it is, using what will be the last time in her life she’ll even have a _prayer_ of maintaining some modicum of privacy to hide from the world. She returns to MIT; buries herself in a flurry of concurrent research and projects.

 

_Screw the rest._

 

U is ~~born~~ built during this period, and they quickly prove to be a somewhat more competent sibling for DUM-E.

 

Alongside her academic work she begins a project that she hopes will one day grow into something truly spectacular.

 

Tony keeps to herself, powering her way steadily towards doctorates in Physics, Mechanical Engineering that she suspects might mutate into a third in Electrical Engineering. She rarely lets herself think of anything outside the lab.

 

It took about five minutes of being in public after the accident before she was sick of the false compassion and saccharine sympathies bombarding her at every turn.

 

These days she all but lives in the shop.

 

On August 17th, 1992, what has become her private sanctuary is breached by Air Force ROTC undergraduate student James Rhodes.

 

_Rhodey._

 

He is twenty-two. Brilliant in his own right, set to graduate with Honors in the spring before joining the Air Force as a commissioned officer. When they meet in early August it's  _technically_ not his fault.

 

Misfiled paperwork assigns him to overlapping workshop hours with what’s meant to be Tony’s singular, personal hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

 

Surprisingly, once she finally gives up on avoiding him three weeks into the semester, they strike up a casual… acquaintanceship. She’s learned her lessons from Sunset and Ty and for once in her life she sets _very clear_ personal and professional boundaries around their relationship.

 

_(Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice? Yeah, fuck that noise.)_

 

She tells herself the gradual thaw in the space between this is because it was simply getting to be too much effort to avoid him while still maintaining her habits of living, breathing, and sleeping her work.

 

_(It has nothing to do with loneliness or any such ridiculous notions.)_

 

Tony guards her bots especially fiercely. Is careful not to reveal too much or run the risk of reverse engineering whenever he’s in the lab.

 

Then one day he walks in on her berating a drooping DUM-E.

 

 _C’mon, DUM-E, can you_ please _just cooperate for once. U is never like this! C’mon where’s the sibling rivalry, you just gonna let them do better than you?!_

 

_Yes, yes you are. Oughta just donate you to the department, except let’s be real there’s no way in hell I’m hiring some undergraduate lab assistant instead. You’re way better than them, buddy, and don’t you ever forget it._

 

 _Just, y’know. Maybe take a cue or two from U on the lab safety, instead of letting_ them _take a cue from you! They’re very impressionable, you need to be the good example here!_

 

 _...Oh for the love of God. Okay. That’s it! I’ve had it up to here, and_ dammit _we are not leaving this shop until the pair of you know how to use the fire extinguisher!_

 

She’s brought out of her tirade by his audible snort. She jumps at the unexpected sound; the picture of a deer in the headlights. When she registers the company, she turns beet-red in a way she didn’t know she was even _capable_ of.

 

Tony braces herself for the inevitable mockery and teasing, oddly defensive of DUM-E and U now that there’s the real possibility of _someone else_ interacting with her bots and, possibly, hurting their feelings.

 

~~_(They’re just machines they don’t have feelings.)_ ~~

 

Instead, he merely smiles. Greets her. And settles into the familiar groove of his own work. Gradually, she allows herself to relax in turn.

 

After that day, she begins to let a bit more of herself to come through in their interactions. Acquaintanceship turns into friendship and at some point along the way, Rhodes becomes Rhodey _._

 

She has just turned eighteen when she attends a graduation ceremony for the first time. It's Rhodey’s rather than her own. She meets his mother Roberta. The woman is arthritic and wheelchair-bound but still proud and full of strength.

 

That evening, in the high of emotions and champagne-fueled celebration, they fall into bed together for the first time. It is comfortable. Enjoyable. Rhodey is a considerate lover in a way that few of her past partners have ever been.

 

A part of her remains on edge in the upcoming weeks, certain that _this_ will be the straw that ruins yet another relationship.

 

The darker corners of her mind speculate that she’s being played yet again, that Rhodey will prove no different than anyone else. That he’s got what he wants from her now and it’s only a matter of time until he leaves her too.

 

She ignores the voice. They continue in that state of uneasy equilibrium, still fundamentally the same relationship but now with the additional variable of _sex_ threatening to upset the balance.

 

After a few weeks, Rhodey says he wants to talk and she thinks, _this is it. This is where the shoe drops._

 

 _“It’s nothing you did wrong. The sex is… well, pretty fucking incredible, I’ll be honest, but… look. Tones. I love you, but I don’t think I’ll ever be_ in love _with you. And I… well, I enjoy sleeping with you but it complicates things. I think you can see that too, and I don’t know if—what—sometimes you get this look in your eyes, just for a moment. And Tones? I value your friendship more than anything else about you. You’re more like a sister than a girlfriend, I think?”_

 

And he’s so clearly concerned, wide-eyed and genuine. A wave of relief rushes through her, and she says—

 

 _Oh thank God, I feel the same way. Except, you know. Brother? What with the dick—and what a magnificent dick it was, platypus, truly. Don’t give me that look, platypus is a perfectly acceptable nickname, and just because we’re not fucking doesn’t mean I can’t comment on what is_ objectively _a quality sample of male genitalia; stop laughing you’re making me laugh and this is a_ very serious conversation, _you know—_

 

Friends with benefits slides back into strictly friends.

 

Rhodey leaves for basic.

 

And life goes on.


	2. Lipgloss and Photoshop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The most dangerous thing you can say is, We’ve always done it this way.” — Grace Hopper

August 23rd, 1992. 

 

Two pink lines threaten to upend Tony’s life anew.

 

Tony doesn’t quite admit to panic, but it is close. They were careful; they did everything right. He always wore a condom. She never missed a day.

 

_ Tony knows she cannot allow this to happen to her again, condom or no. _

 

(It won’t.)

 

_ (Another field she’ll quietly revolutionize, even as she makes a name for herself as a titan in the defense industry.) _

 

In the here and now, she has more pressing concerns.

 

It is mid-September before she tells anyone.

 

She shows up unannounced on the doorstep of Roberta Rhodes two days before Rhodey is set to return from basic.

 

Roberta takes one look at her, at the dark bags under her eyes more visible than usual and the guilty look on her face, and ushers her inside without another word. After several false starts and a lot of fidgeting, she manages to tell Mrs. Rhodes what has happened over chamomile tea and a tin of biscotti.

 

In the aftermath, Mrs. Rhodes all but insists she temporarily move in. She stays in the guest bedroom until Rhodey returns.

 

It helps. 

 

But all the support in the world wouldn’t have been enough to hide the expression of trepidation she adopts the moment she catches sight of Rhodey when he walks through the door.

 

Just like his mother, he is instantly aware something is wrong.

 

Tony is terrified. It translates into rambling and an inability to meet his eyes before she eventually manages stutter out the words:

 

_ “I’m pregnant.” _

 

Rhodey’s response is so very  _ Rhodey.  _ Before he says anything he envelopes her in a warm, reassuring hug.

 

_ (It’s one of the things she loves about him.) _

 

He swears to support her no matter what. And it’s only then that she’s able to admit, even to herself, the choice she knew she was going to make all along.

 

Tentatively, she says she’s considering going through with the pregnancy. Giving birth.

 

Rhodey proposes on the spot using his engineering ring.

 

Tony says no.

 

_ (Rhodey is a good man. Too good to walk away.) _

 

Neither of them really want this. Neither of them are ready or even particularly interested in trying to raise a child together. Any attempt is liable to blow up in their faces.

 

Add in the inevitable eventual media discovery? The only answer she could possibly give is clear. She’s not willing to put a child through a childhood that even  _ remotely  _ mirrors her own. Especially not a child of Rhodey’s.

 

She wants to keep the child. But… she doesn’t want to  _ keep  _ the child. By any definition, she’d make a terrible mother.

 

No, an attempt at the white picket fence lifestyle would ruin them both. It’d destroy the bond they’d managed to build. Likely ruin an innocent kid alongside that.

 

She can see in his eyes, in the blink-and-you-miss-it flash of relief and the infinitesimal relaxation in his shoulders, that on some level he’s reached that conclusion as well.

 

+++

 

On May 31st, 1993, Tony’s daughter is born and promptly christened Riri Williams.

 

In the interim, Tony avoids the public eye like the plague. She delays the completion of her doctorates, is eight months pregnant during what would have been her hooding ceremony. Instead, she takes to working her way through the MBA curriculum. Obie has been haranguing her about the program as a useful way to help her prepare to take over SI when she turns twenty-one, and she’s always scoffed at the suggestion.

 

_ She knows he means well, but sometimes Tony wonders if Obie realizes she’s been preparing to take over the company one day since  _ birth.

 

_ (“Stark Industries  _ will  _ stay with the Starks.”) _

 

Since much of the work is completed via correspondence, she’s fairly certain the vast majority of the public simply assumes she’s in rehab. Because, you know, far be it from her to not jump straight back into the spotlight less than a year after her parents’ deaths.

 

A few carefully-orchestrated public photos at strategic points in her pregnancy that make her look anything  _ but _ are enough to quash that particular strain of rumors before it can truly take root.

 

When her water breaks and she heads to the pre-arranged private clinic, Rhodey is there. So are the carefully-vetted adoptive parents, Grant and Joanne Williams. Joanne is a moderately successful small business owner and pastry chef. Grant is a freelance reporter and soon-to-be stay-at-home father. They live in one of the many, many interchangeable suburbs of Chicago, and have spent the past four years trying to adopt after learning Grant was sterile.

 

Riri will spend her early childhood safe, happy, and loved.

 

_ Anonymous. _

 

+++

 

It is 1998. Nearing the end of the millennium. Tony Stark has been at the helm of Stark Industries for three years.

 

When people say  _ Stark  _ these days, it is  _ always  _ Tony they think of first.

 

Her every action invites headlines and social trends.

 

At her first board meeting as CEO, Tony struts in proudly in a tailored suit and four-inch heels. The  _ click-clack  _ of her heels in the suddenly-silent room refuses to be ignored, as does the woman wearing them.

 

That evening, she’ll just as proudly wear a custom, flared, ruby-red dress to an early-summer gala ostensibly in support of a charity.

 

She is Tony Stark, and she does not give _ a single fuck  _ about society’s expectations of and for her. Not anymore.

 

She makes suits designed for women a socially-acceptable high-fashion trend through sheer, unapologetic obstinacy. Well, that and the irreputable, highly-visible evidence that  _ yes,  _ a woman in a suit can and does look just as devastatingly powerful and attractive with the right cut and style. 

 

Tony makes the Armanis of the world take notice, causing a small ‘renaissance’ in the women’s professional attire world. Within a few years, department stores and high-end brands alike almost universally carry a substantial feminine collection rather than the comparative piecemeal that’d been available before. 

 

There are inevitably critics aplenty, of course. 

 

She drags the world kicking and screaming into new social norms anyway.

 

Tony has never hidden her sexuality, but she makes headlines worldwide that September when a sex tape of her with a female companion is shared online—

 

_ Fuck you too, Rumiko. _

 

—and the footage goes viral.

 

The first time she’s asked about it directly in an interview, she has only this to say:

 

“Did you think I was going to deny  _ half  _ the world even the potential of one day spending an evening with me? Please. I’m not that cruel.”

 

_ (Frigid bitch, they say. Shameless slut, they decry. Tony stands above it all, relishes the role even, because she is  _ Tony Goddamn Stark,  _ a titan and the face of an industry, and she  _ will not  _ apologize for who she is.) _

 

Tony thrives in the spotlight of Los Angeles, living in a lush penthouse in the heart of downtown while she works on what will be her modern-day Monticello in Malibu.

 

Thousands of miles east, Riri is growing up in a stable, healthy home in the suburbs of Chicago. She grows up knowing she is adopted. Knowing that her birth mother and father may not be raising her, but they love her all the same.

 

Riri takes after her birth mother in that she is quite precocious. She blows through childhood milestones like she’s competing in the the 400m dash at the Olympics.

 

Riri always knows she’s got two sets of parents out there, the same way that she knows she has curly hair or that her dad will protect her from any monster that  _ dares  _ to hide under her bed. She is three and a half the first time she directly asks to know more about the set she doesn’t live with.

 

Grant and Joanne are half-prepared for the questions, knowing they would come eventually but not, perhaps, expecting them so soon.

 

Tony has been  _ very adamant  _ that there be no contact between herself and the Williams family  barring extraordinary circumstances. In her experience, nothing good could come from growing up a Stark. Certainly not from being publicly associated with  _ Tony  _ in any way.

 

(For Riri’s first three Christmases, Tony and Rhodey are sent an identical package of photos chronicling the past year in their daughter’s life.)

 

But how to explain the complex realities behind Tony’s decision in a way that ensured Riri neither blames herself nor grows up hating her birth parents?

 

Challenging, perhaps, but in some ways the controversies Tony constantly finds herself embroiled in during that period make it easier.

 

_ Your mother loves you,  _ they explain,  _ but she’s well-known and there are a lot of dangerous people that would be after you if they have even the slightest hint that you exist. _

 

Then: 

 

_ They live and work in an environment that’s not safe for children. There are a lot of people depending on them that make it impossible for them to leave. _

 

And: 

 

_ They found your mommy and daddy because they knew just how much we wanted a have a family that included a beautiful baby girl like you. _

 

Riri accepts their explanations and comes to the conclusion that her parents are superheros.

 

~~_ (not yet) _ ~~

 

That Christmas, Tony gets her first Christmas card, hand-made on red construction paper, from her daughter.

 

Riri spends  _ weeks  _ laboring over its creation.

 

The words within may primarily be written by an adult’s hand, but Riri spends countless hours practicing writing her name so that she can sign the card herself.

 

In return, Tony sends a semi-anonymized gift back addressed to her daughter for the first time.

 

It’s a picture Roberta had taken, jealously hoarded. Tony is holding Riri. Rhodey is leaning back in a chair beside her. Joanne and Grant have just walked into the room and are seeing their child for the first time. Joanne’s arm is outstretched, a moment away from brushing her fingertips against the newborn’s cheek.

 

Grant’s hand is on his wife’s shoulder, squeezing it softly.

 

Like Joanne, he’s looking at Riri like she holds the secrets of the universe.

 

_ (It’s the only photo of the five of them together that will ever be taken.) _

 

(In fact, it’s the only time following Riri’s birth that all five of them will even be in the same room at once.)

 

It’s the first time Riri sees her mother.

 

As Riri grows older, Tony and Rhodey will become slightly more frequent presences in their daughter’s life, though they make no attempts to claim the titles of ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.

 

Tony in particular finds other ways to show that she cares. She ends every one of their rare phone calls with the words “I love you”, shared like a treasured secret.

 

_ (She  _ refuses  _ to let her daughter grow up doubting something so fundamental.) _

 

~~_ (not like she did) _ ~~

 

Time and time again, the outside world and Tony’s portrayal in the media prove that she made the right choice in choosing to keep Riri as far away from that life as possible.

 

Grant and Joanne encourage Riri, but they do not pressure her.

 

_ (They do not set the same impossible standards Howard once placed on his sole heir’s shoulders.) _

 

They brag about how their daughter has taken to reading Junie B. Jones and how ‘Gloria, you should  _ see  _ the house she built for her barbies with that jumbo lego kit you and Dave got her, at this rate by the time she starts kindergarten her dolls will be living in swankier houses than  _ we  _ are.’

 

Rhodey takes to infrequently visiting Riri when he’s on leave as she grows old enough to understand discretion. His career has exploded, particularly once he becomes the official Stark Industries liaison, so the breaks are rare and short when they happen.

 

Tony never visits.

 

_ (“Let them see you’ve got a weak spot, and you’re inviting your enemies to exploit it.”) _

 

+++

 

It is 2001. The new millennium. In the six years since she took the helm at Stark Industries Tony is turning a thriving, multi-million dollar business into an international, billion-dollar empire. All doubts of her competency and drive have been utterly, ruthlessly crushed.

 

A lot happens in 2001.

 

In early February, she finishes her mansion and brings JARVIS online for the first time. She programs him using an improved version of the learning algorithms she’d first attempted to implement with DUM-E and later U.

 

It quickly becomes obvious that JARVIS has the potential to develop far beyond his robotic… predecessors? Siblings?

 

At first, it’s an adjustment to have him so thoroughly integrated into her life and work. 

 

No one has ever accused Tony of being introverted, but she’s long had a habit of narrating and commenting to herself on her work. With JARVIS online, there is now someone there to speak back. Narration gives way to conversation, and it’s barely a month after he comes online before JARVIS initiates a dialogue of his own accord.

 

_ (She’s so proud of her baby boy.) _

 

In late March, she meets Virginia Potts—Pepper—when she hires the woman to be her new PA.

 

It’s an old argument with Obie. Her need for privacy and unwillingness to allow anyone new into her very limited circle of trust has long been at war with her utter inability to reliably stick to a schedule and her tendency to conveniently forget about any meeting she didn’t want to attend.

 

That changes with Pepper.

 

Pepper challenges Tony in a way none have managed before, meeting Tony’s obstinacy head-on with her own that somehow manages to avoid hitting any of the bull-headed refusals Tony is inclined to adopt when she feels even slightly pressured.

 

She  _ gets  _ Tony in a way that even Rhodey can’t. She knows when to press and when to let things slide; is able to pick out the meetings Tony  _ really  _ can’t miss from those she can, despite external claims to the contrary, do without.

 

She’s clever, and witty, and unafraid to challenge Tony or to tell her ‘no’—the latter of which being an especially rare and prized trait.

 

Tony flirts with Pepper, can’t help herself really, but rather than getting uncomfortable (or, y’know, flirting back and ultimately fucking her) she’ll either let it pass without comment or banter back.

 

_ (And if Tony relishes those moments where she’ll successfully catch Pepper by surprise with a genuine compliment and Pepper’s not quite able to mask her smile or flush? That too passes without comment.) _

 

Like with JARVIS, she soon finds herself wondering how she ever survived without Pepper in the first place.

 

Pepper’s appearance in her life comes not a moment too soon, because that summer a series of events kick off that will push her personal wealth into the billions for the first time.

 

It starts on June 19th. A malfunctioning missile hits a soccer field in Tal Afar, Iraq, resulting in the deaths of twenty-three people and the injury of eleven more.

 

Investigations soon confirm the missile was designed by Hammer Tech. Worse, all evidence is pointing towards criminal negligence having occurred somewhere within the company’s supply chain. Said alleged negligence in turn enabled the faulty missile navigation system to be delivered and ultimately deployed unscrutinized. The media storm dominates the airwaves for weeks, to the point where as June gives way to July, rumors are spreading that Justin Hammer will soon be indicted.

 

Hammer Tech has long been one of Stark Industries’ greatest competitors for military contracts. With the Tal Afar disaster, Hammer’s cheaper pricing is no longer quite so appealing to Congress or the top brass.

 

When she first took over as CEO, their stocks and revenue had taken a bit of a hit that could largely be attributed to doubts centered around Tony’s gender.  Tal Afar gives her remaining skeptics in government the final push they need to return to Stark Industries once more.

 

Early August, they sign a five hundred million dollar contract with the U.S. Armed Forces.

 

Then 9/11 happens. A month later, on October 7th, ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ sees the U.S. and her allies invading Afghanistan. They’re primarily equipped with Stark weaponry.

 

The company is soaring to new heights. In the face of a grieving nation’s thirst for vengeance, the voices that typically might scream of ‘warmongering’ or ‘war profiteering’ are all but silent.

 

A nation is in mourning, but Tony’s inner circle has always been incredibly limited and her personal life has thus far managed to escape any direct grief. She worries about Rhodey, sure. He’s a pilot at heart and a Captain in the Air Force. As the liaison to Stark Industries, he’s heavily involved in the planning and execution of the invasion. For the same reason, his relationship with Tony ensures that he’s too valuable of an asset to deploy directly to the front lines.

 

That all changes on November 12th, with American Airlines Flight 587 in New York City. A few minutes after takeoff from JFK, it crashes in Queens. All two hundred and sixty people onboard the flight die, as do five unfortunate bystanders on the ground.

 

The bystanders in question?

 

Grant Williams. His wife, Joanne Williams. His parents, Gloria and David Williams. His younger sister, Penelope Walters.

 

His daughter, Riri, and his youngest sister, Carly, survive because they are elsewhere at the time. They live thanks to Riri's concentrated efforts an hour prior to convince Carly to supervise a visit to a nearby park. Carly hadn't taken much convincing, easily swayed by Riri's eagerness to meet up again with a friend she’d met there the day before coupled with an impressive set of puppy-dog eyes.

 

Sealed records are opened.

 

That night Tony gets a call.

 

Several days and many hours of agonizing indecision later, Riri boards a cross-country flight to Los Angeles.

 

+++

 

Tony’s first in-person interaction with her daughter goes something like this:

 

Riri, standing in the doorway with her small rolling suitcase, a purple backpack with red polka-dots packed to the brim on her shoulders.

 

Tony, standing in the foyer in an AC/DC t-shirt and workshop jeans. Tony, after hours spent deliberately not acknowledging her child’s impending arrival up to the last possible second. Tony, after hours spent losing herself in her most recent effort to rebuild a classic car that will join her ever-expanding collection underground. Tony, smudged with grease and dirt and who-knows-what else.

 

Riri, hovering in the doorway uncertainly for a long moment.

 

Tony, just as hesitant and uncertain. Frozen. At a loss. Her driver Happy Hogan shifting behind Riri. Shooting Tony a meaningful look that snapped her back into reality.

 

Tony, taking a half-step forward and tentatively opening her arms. Inviting her daughter into her home with a welcoming gesture she’d once treasured as a rare but welcome greeting from Jarvis. She's never been on the initiating end before this moment.

 

A half second where Riri doesn’t react. Tony’s a hair’s breadth from panic when suddenly the small figure is running towards her. The suitcase lies abandoned and is left to clatter to the ground.

 

Tony kneels to meet her daughter the way Jarvis once had for Tony. They embrace for the first time since that day more than eight years ago, when Tony held a newborn in her arms for the first and only time.

 

In the background, Happy quietly sets the suitcase aright indoors. He meets Tony’s eyes for a moment. Reads the dismissal in them. Gives a slight nod in acknowledgement before making his exit and gently sliding the door closed behind himself.

 

Tony shifts slightly. Tentatively raises an arm to brush against Riri’s hair.

 

Riri buries her face in Tony’s shirt. 

 

Tony doesn’t know how to comfort a grieving child. Doesn’t know how to be a role model or parental figure of any sort. Is terrified of doing something wrong, of messing up and failing a little girl who deserves the world.

 

Silent tears turn into wracking sobs that further darken an already-dirtied shirt.

 

Tony combs through wild, vibrant curls with her fingers and comforts her daughter.

 

+++

 

Tony neglects to tell Pepper about the new addition to her household.

 

It’s unintentional, a case of telling herself she’d give the woman a heads up later and then later forgetting she’d put it off and assuming Pepper already knew.

 

Pepper meets Riri two days after she arrives, when Tony finally gets around to letting her PA (and by extension, Obie and the rest of her company) know she’s taking a short leave and to not expect to seen her in the office again until after the New Year.

 

Pepper’s concerned enough, particularly when she learns that Tony’s still ensconced in her Malibu home, to check-in on her boss in person.

 

Whatever she was expecting when she entered Tony’s workshop, it wasn’t this. Wasn’t two pairs of shoes poking out from underneath Tony’s most recent passion project, one set significantly smaller and attached to a far smaller person than the other. Wasn’t Tony, rambling in the way she often did, but this time with an air of explanation to her commentary.

 

Wasn’t the brown-skinned, dark-haired child that revealed herself alongside Tony when Pepper caught their attention enough to drag Tony away from her work.

 

No, Pepper certainly wasn’t expecting the small, serious girl that looked up at Pepper with Tony’s eyes.

 

_ (She falls in love with the girl instantly anyway.) _

 

+++

 

The year rounds itself out with a thwarted attack on a Parisian flight destined for Miami after a passenger, one Richard Reed, attempted to detonate explosives he’d hidden in his shoes.

 

It sparks something in Tony, inspiring her to see the utility and potential of non-weaponry-based applications of Stark Industries numerous lines of defensive technology for the first time.

 

She’s all but bouncing when she pitches the idea to Obie, and it’s not long before he’s convinced of the hastily-outlined business plan’s potential. In a post-9/11 world, Stark Industries’ scanning and detection systems will prove to be just the thing the country needs to begin to feel safe in the air and in their airports again.

 

Stark Industries stocks skyrocket, catapulting to ever greater heights at a rate that leaves investors salivating and Obie thrilled.

 

+++

 

It is 2008 and people are starting to call Tony Stark not just the most influential woman of her generation, but also one of the most influential public figures  _ period. _

 

Riri is fourteen, soon to be fifteen, and through some miracle they’ve continued to keep her existence out of the public eye.

 

Tony is far from perfect, but somehow their relationship manages to work. Riri blossoms into a beautiful young woman, and like her mother before her, her age is frequently mistaken as being much older.

 

Unlike Tony, however, she will not be attending college directly before the age of seventeen. Even that had been a hard sell for Tony, a point of contention for  _ years  _ until Riri’s wheedling eventually convinces her to compromise from the eighteen she’d been adamant about and the sixteen Riri had desired.

 

(Riri hardly needs the classroom to learn. Not when she has JARVIS and the workshop and Tony herself, who could teach her so much more than any classroom could. Not when nascent online courses could replace many of the in-person lectures and seminars needed to continue on with her broader education at a steady pace.)

 

Riri is finishing her Sophomore year of high school at an accelerated private school. She is shielded from scrutiny by the Williams name and the school’s unique curriculum allowing her to spend her Mondays and Wednesdays participating in an experiential learning internship at a sponsoring company.

 

_ (Riri, unsurprisingly, is accepted as the first, and so far only, high school intern in Stark Industries’ Engineering Departments.) _

 

_ (Surprisingly, it’s not even a lie.) _

 

Riri is happy. She has a healthy social life. She’s part of the school women’s rugby team, and she embraces her athleticism in a way that baffles Tony and blatantly thrills Rhodey.

 

She’s made it onto the Varsity team as a reserve, an impressive feat for a Sophomore, and the team is on track to make their way into the National Championships that Spring.

 

_ (Tony promises herself she’ll find a way to make the game if she does, knows that Rhodey is already tentatively planning his next leave to overlap with the tournament as much as possible.) _

 

Tony Stark is on top of the world.

 

And then, on February 1st, she leaves for Afghanistan.

 

For three impossibly long months, she won’t come back.


	3. Mascara and Mimosas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe that you have done." — Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet

Tony was not raped.

 

She knows that’s the assumption; even Rhodey doesn’t quite seem to believe her denials.

 

_(irony? perhaps it’s just that the one thing people will never believe from Tony is the truth)_

 

The disbelief is likely not helped by her reaction the one time a doctor moves to unwrap her chest. Rhodey’s presence as a mediator is likely the only reason her reaction didn’t escalate into something more serious than a few bruises on a sympathetic combat medic.

 

She’s given a private shower when she arrives at the nearest base with her rescuers. Rhodey knows her well enough to provide clean, sturdy bandages to replace the frayed, stained ones she’s been wearing since her captors stopped offering replacements post-surgery. It doesn’t cover the scars entirely. Creeping tendrils crawling up towards her collar bones and trailing down her midsection are still plainly visible. But it covers the reactor and that’s ultimately the only thing that matters to Tony.

 

_(a weakness exposed is a weakness exploited)_

 

She’s told the date, learns just how long she’s been gone _(three months)_ , and all she can say is—

 

_“Rhodey, I missed the game. Was she—?”_

 

And the answer is yes. Of course it is. And Tony cannot wait a second longer. In that moment, she doesn’t, _can’t,_ care about more than a decade of carefully maintained-secrecy because all she wants is to hear her daughter’s voice, _dammit._

 

Rhodey, thankfully, is slightly more clear-headed, ensuring Tony gets a moment of privacy to make the call.

 

It’s not even six in the morning on the West Coast. The phone scarcely rings once before there’s a click and Riri’s on the line.

 

And there’s a million things that might be said in that moment, but what comes out is:

 

_“Heard you’re a National Champion now. Sorry I missed the game, kiddo.”_

 

And on the other end of the line, a choked voice:

 

_“M-mom?!”_

 

And it’s the first time Riri’s called her that. It’s all Tony can do to keep a solid grip on her phone with her suddenly-trembling hand. She’s always been terrible with emotions, she knows she is even after years of efforts to change that. But this is important, this is _her daughter,_ and—

 

_“Yeah, honey, it’s me. I—God I missed you; I love you so much Riri I’ll be home soon—”_

 

Her voice chokes on the words, on the emotions they encapsulate.

 

_“L-love you too, mom.”_

 

There’s no doubt the title is intentional this time.

 

_(God Riri’s so brilliant, knows her so well, how was she so fortunate that she got to have a daughter like that in her life?)_

 

If Tony’s crying, they’re tears of relief.

 

Tears of joy.

 

+++

 

There is Rhodey, telling her she needs “time to get her mind straight.”

 

There is the media, the misogyny of questions on her fitness coated with a thin veneer of political correctness.

 

There is a summer spent “laying low”, Riri glued to her side both within the workshop and without.

 

There is the Mark II, a product of countless sleepless nights and that constant need to do _something,_ anything, that had kept her going in Afghanistan. When Riri returns to school for her Junior year, the armor comes to consume her days as well.

 

Then comes the Mark III. The almost-but-not-quite intimate moments with Pepper. Gulmira. A golden goose and Tony’s ninth symphony in one fell swoop.

 

Another betrayal.

 

Another person who defined her worth solely in terms of what she could do for them. Another person she trusted, pulling the rug out from under her in the most devastating ways possible.

 

There is the Iron Monger, leading to her introduction to the shadowy world of SHIELD.

 

 _(An intelligence agency she’s somehow never heard of, as if that wasn’t_ completely _terrifying…)_

 

+++

 

Four words:

 

_I am Iron Man._

 

And then—

 

And then.

 

+++

 

In the back of her mind, Tony always knew that palladium was unsustainable as a core for an arc reactor attached to her body. Compared to the car battery, compared to hauling around a leaking mess, dripping with lead and sulfuric acid and a half-dozen other caustic chemicals, it had been her best option at the time. The reactor gave her perhaps two years instead of a week and freed her from the burden of lugging around a forty-pound battery that left painful burns whenever it brushed against her skin.

 

If she’d thought of it at all, she thought that ~~if~~ once she’d escaped and had full access to a proper lab and all her resources, she’d be able to develop an alternative.

 

It’s a constant project running in the background by the New Year. JARVIS is running simulations nigh-around the clock. By February—

 

_(The one year anniversary of her kidnapping, and Pepper’s face tells the story her voice cannot of a birthday forever marred by an explosion and a late-night phone call from Obadiah Stane.)_

 

—hundreds of the most plausible candidate non-toxic elements and compounds and permutations therein have been tested and failed.

 

At that point, Tony starts trying to think bigger, trying to find a replacement for the arc reactor entirely.

 

There are several problems with this approach, unfortunately.

 

She consults with the best heart surgeons in the world about the possibility of removing the shrapnel from her heart and reconstructing her chest from there.

 

She’s told it’s more likely that she’d survive skydiving without a parachute than any hypothetical heart surgery given the extreme nature of the damage.

 

Then there’s the possibility of utilizing some sort of external power source, at least part of the time. A chestpiece, perhaps, allowing for an additional degree of separation between the arc reactor and her body.

 

She tinkers with designs.

 

JARVIS continues his simulations.

 

Tony slowly but surely increases her activities as Iron Man.

 

_(why does she do it?)_

 

_(JARVIS is quick to inform her that piloting the armor only accelerates the palladium’s poisonous progress.)_

 

_(is she addicted to the adrenaline?)_

 

_(the adulation?)_

 

_(is it the lives saved?)_

 

_(the wrongs made right?)_

 

~~_(...does she have a death wish?)_ ~~

 

Her research leads her to delve into corners of theoretical physics she hasn’t touched since her doctoral studies in her late teens. She spends hours in the lab as her own test subject, experimenting with the interactions between the arc reactor, the electromagnet it powers, and the weak electromagnetic fields inherent to the human body itself.

 

The composite equilibrium that keeps the shrapnel stationary relative to her own heart is fragile, balanced on a knife’s edge with an infinitesimal margin of error now that she’s past the “grace period” of her initial injury.

 

_(the walking dead, Yinsen called them.)_

 

That she was able to do those calculations on the fly in an isolated cave while recovering from heart surgery and minor bouts of torture—

 

_(assuming you didn’t consider the heart surgery itself to be torture, for all that it may have saved her life…)_

 

—was, quite frankly, a feat so unbelievable that she doubted anyone, even given the specs for the miniature arc reactor she’d also developed, under the same conditions could recreate her work. Could take deconstructed pieces of her own missiles and turn it it something that was so much more.

 

_(...weaponry from the Freedom Line, the missiles making a reactor necessary in the first place…)_

 

She runs the numbers a half-dozen times—

 

_(what is insanity but doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result?)_

 

—and has JARVIS verifying every calculation along the way just as meticulously.

 

By early March, she’s forced to admit that it’s the arc reactor or bust barring some miracle solution dropping out of thin air.

 

 _(And if Tony can be considered devout in any way, it would be in her conviction that there is no—could be no—God upstairs. And if there_ is, _they would hardly turn to Tony first.)_

 

~~_(she deserves to die)_ ~~

 

She isn’t giving up, but…

 

Tony has always been practical. If she’s going to die, at least this time around she has plenty of advance notice to get her affairs in order and minimize the pain felt by those she leaves behind.

 

Her focus shifts, and she’s not admitting defeat, _she’s not._

 

And yet…

 

_What is a legacy?_

 

+++

 

_It’s planting seeds in a garden you’ll never get to see._

 

There is Riri, nearing the end of her Junior year of high school. Tony’s rescue and a summer spent all but inseparable in the workshop before her daughter had returned to school in the autumn ready to take on the world.

 

There’s cross-country races and dual enrollment courses through UCLA. Homecoming and Winter Formal and Student Government and National Honors Society.

 

Tony is BCC’ed on the bimonthly reports of Riri’s work as an intern from new mentor on a new team in a new department created in the massive reorganization following Tony’s return. Her new manager sings Riri’s praises, telling her in a one-on-one meeting that she could “very well be the next Tony Stark.”

 

There’s Thanksgiving, an entire week spent on a private island just the two of them when Tony still believes a solution to the reactor problem is imminent. Christmas is spent in Malibu, the burgeoning fears that it may be Tony’s last still little more than a particularly persistent whisper in the back of her mind she can largely push aside.

 

Then the ball drops at midnight and suddenly it’s 2009. It’s the spark igniting the burndown clock.

 

+++

 

_I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me._

 

Pieces from a jigsaw none are close enough to assemble:

 

Tony begins offloading even more of her duties as CEO onto Pepper, a gradual build-up with the dual benefits of pushing Pepper away from Tony and giving the woman the final pieces of training and experience she’ll need to completely take over. Riri is a teenager, and Tony remembers what it is to be young. What it feels like to have the rug swept out from under you and your life dictated by others. She won’t do that to her daughter.

 

She begins work in earnest on War Machine, the legacy of Iron Man carried on in the hands of a man Tony can trust and the government will accept. It’s the most she can do to safeguard his career for as long as he desires, and if there’s anyone in the military and government she still believes in, pushing and pushing and fighting legal battles for, it’s him.

 

There’s Riri. She’ll take care of the bots and JARVIS when Tony cannot, and they will care for her in turn. The arc reactor technology and the dozens of other designs and schematics and devices she’s kept from the world will be left in her hands.

 

_(The designs for the suit, because who else could hope to maintain the War Machine in Tony’s absence?)_

 

_(...and maybe, someday, Riri might choose to take flight using wings of her own.)_

 

Winter gives way to spring, and in it Tony sees the promise of a new beginning for her loved ones.

 

+++

 

_Teach me how to say goodbye._

 

Tony does nothing by halves. When she runs the calculations in her mind and determines the best way to minimize any suffering caused by her death is to ensure no one cares enough to mourn, she begins systematically hacking away at the bonds she treasures.

 

Riri, the entanglement of familial love and _maternal instinct_. Tony knows what it is to lose a mother, and Riri has already lost one of her own. Better to lose a Howard than a father, and better to lose a Tony than a mother.

 

It starts with ‘forgetting’ games. Travelling more often in both her role as CEO and her role as Iron Man. Slowly crowding out the time she’d grown accustomed to reserving for Riri with a dozen different excuses and distractions.

 

It comes to a head over Riri’s sixteenth birthday celebration. Tony knows what Riri’s hoping for, what she’s expecting. The end of the school year coincides nicely with her birthday and traditionally, they’ve celebrated by going on holiday. A week in the Amazon. Ten days in Japan. A few days on the private island. It varied, and often it took months of coordinated effort with Pepper to schedule around her duties as CEO. One year, they managed two weeks in Australia thanks to the major Stark Industries office in Sydney that was conveniently long overdue for an in-person check-in with the CEO.

 

In years past, Riri’s sixteenth birthday was envisioned as three weeks touring the mediterranean. A private yacht. Riri. Rhodey. Perhaps even a few of Riri’s friends.

 

Riri floated the conversation over Spring Break. The start of a routine, the leading question and Tony's response a tradition in itself at this point.

 

Tony swung her hatchet through that as well.

 

A few hours later, JARVIS announces an incoming call from Rhodey.

 

She’s tempted to ignore him, lets the call hang for a few seconds before reluctantly agreeing to patch him through. His face appears on one of her project screens.

 

“What the hell, Tony?”

 

“...Nice to see you too, platypus.”

 

“No, you don’t get to do that right now, not when I just spent forty-five minutes on the line with our kid crying her eyes out.”

 

Tony’s too good to let the instinctive moment of guilt and remorse shine through. Instead, she shrugs, evasively replying—

 

“I hardly cancelled the trip entirely; like I told her the two of you are more than welcome to still go. If anything, she should be thrilled—now she doesn’t have to worry about having The Talk with any friends she wants to invite. And if not, well— when’s the last time the two of you got some father-daughter bonding time, huh?”

 

“A couple weeks ago, Tony. When we spent a three day weekend in Vegas at the USA Sevens Rugby Championship. Which you _also_ skipped. And I talked to Pepper, so don’t even give me the work excuse.”

 

“I was in Oklahoma! Helping clear rubble from the tornadoes!”

 

“Tony. You’re not FEMA. I’ll give that you may have sped up their timeline a bit, or saved them some money on heavy machinery, but there are already systems in place with professionals to handle these things for a _reason._ I’m sorry, Tony, but we both know you’re just making excuses.”

 

“Rhodey. This is different. I’ve got Congress and the military breathing down my neck about the suit, investors on my back about our revenue trajectory for the year. Even the fucking U.N. is making inquiries about the long-term legality of international usage of the suit. I don’t have time for a goddamn vacation.”

 

(And if she’s allowing all her rage and frustration regarding the standstill with the palladium to seep into their conversation? Well, it’s not like Rhodey knows the true root cause.)

 

“It’s not about this particular event, it’s about the underlying pattern that this represents. Riri says you’ve been spending less and less time with her for months now. You’re pulling away from her, and I know this time of year might be hard for you but you’ve got to realize it’s been hard for her too. And after all the time you spent together last year, it’s no surprise that she’s upset by the abrupt turn-around. She’s not one of your bots, Tony. You can’t just start ignoring her; she’s your daughter for Chris’sakes!”

 

“Yeah, well. I never wanted a daughter in the first place, did I?”

 

As soon as the words escape, she wants to take them back. She can’t.

 

_(and really, isn’t this what she wants?)_

 

“You don’t mean that.”

 

“And what the hell do you know about what I do and don’t mean?”

 

_(the words are vicious. cruel.)_

 

Rhodey takes several seconds to respond. Tony refuses to break their gaze. There’s a stubborn jut to her chin, a hard look in her eyes. In that moment, she embodies the stereotype that is Tony _Goddamn_ Stark, frigid, self-centered bitch with more than a decade as the undisputed titan and face of the weapons industry under her belt.

 

_(the easiest masks to wear are the ones you already believe to be true.)_

 

“Apparently, less than I thought.”

 

_(it’s for the best. it’s better this way.)_

 

~~_(i’m-sorry-i’m-sorry-i-love-you-i-don’t-want-to-be-alone)_ ~~

 

There’s very little left to be said after that.

 

+++

 

_Is this what you wish the legacy of the great Tony Stark to be?_

 

Time goes on.

 

She hasn’t spoken to Riri or Rhodey in weeks. Pepper continues to reach out, if only because they have to see each other regularly for work.

 

That, of course, is bound to change once Tony takes the final step of offering her the position as CEO. After that, she’s ready to take the hatchet through that final relationship as well.

 

The first swing comes when she appoints Natalie Rushman as her Personal Assistant on Pepper’s first official day as CEO.

 

Miss Rushman comes from legal. She’s an attractive twenty-something with deep red hair. Six months ago, Tony might have had eyes only for Pepper, but… that was a relationship that died before it could properly begin the moment she realized that she was dying.

 

Instead, she blatant ogles Natalie. To Pepper, she’s little more than a “sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.” Natalie, who put herself through law school via a modestly successful career as a lingerie model.

 

Tony couldn’t help but see herself a bit in the younger woman, a reflection of who she might have been born without the silver spoon. Tony has fought for two decades to turn a liability into a strength, from the moment she adopted her iconic pixie cut the day after her abortion.

 

Natalie lacks the advantages Tony had inherent in the Stark name, but she’s embraced her sensuality and turned it into an asset—and damn the detractors that may have judged her for it.

 

Tony flirts. Natalie reciprocates.

 

Neither mistake the advances and innuendo as serious attempts at initiating intimacy.

 

Tony suspects the woman is aware she’s being used to drive a wedge between Tony and Pepper, although she probably assumes the intent is to incite jealousy rather than create distance.

 

The axe falls definitively with Tony’s thirty-fifth, and likely last, birthday. In another year or in another lifetime they might have been on a flight to Italy or Tahiti or Rio de Janeiro.

 

Instead there is this:

 

A party, the kind with dozens of attendees she doesn’t know but has probably slept with and enough liquor for a cohort ten times the size.

 

A drunken Tony in her suit. She comes up with a plan that seems brilliant in the moment, a way to pass the suit onto Rhodey when in nearly any other circumstance it would be taken as proof something had gone terribly wrong.

 

Riri, watching her mother’s meltdown with a mix of horror and humiliation. She’s gently led out of the room by a worried Natalie, while Rhodey steps in with the War Machine armor to stop Tony before she can hurt anyone.

 

~~_(as if JARVIS would let her pilot the suit solo drunk enough to put innocents at risk)_ ~~

 

In the aftermath, she’s left in the ruins of her home.

 

Alone.

 

Just like she wanted.

 

(Right?)

 

Right.

 

_Helluva birthday present._

 

+++

 

Natalie is not Natalie. Tony learns this all too intimately when the woman walks out in a SHIELD uniform the next morning and promptly stabs her in the neck.

 

For a moment, there is panic.

 

_Can Tony just have five minutes without something awful happening?!_

 

Her background had been tailor-made to pull at Tony’s heartstrings and incite sympathy.

 

The comfort of a connection close enough to help but distant enough to prevent regrets, lost in an instant.

 

No, worse.

 

It’d been proven a smokescreen all along.

 

There’s JARVIS, taken offline again.

 

There’s the pseudo-imprisonment in her own home, the visceral reaction to Coulson’s threat—

 

_Taser you and watch supernanny while you drool on the carpet_

 

~~_(the scent of bergamot, mixed with sandalwood and saffron)_ ~~

 

_(wipe away the smudges, brush it off and carry on)_

 

The miracle cure.

 

Pepper and Tony’s first kiss.

 

When all is said and done, when Tony is _not recommended_ and JARVIS is rebooted, she finds herself alone in her workshop.

 

“JARVIS, open a new project folder. Call it… Iron Heart.”

 

+++

 

Snapshots from a period that will prove to be an interlude, an intermission between the acts of the tragicomedy of Tony’s life:

 

_She navigates a nascent romance with Pepper._

 

Tony tries with Pepper in a way that she’s never quite done with anyone before, not even in the doomed ‘relationships’ of her youth.

 

Rhodey and Riri find her flailing efforts hilarious.

 

(The less said of their six-month anniversary, the better.)

 

Pepper, fortunately, somehow seems to find Tony’s actions endearing.

 

When it leaks to the media—as it inevitably does—the press has a field day. Tony doesn’t bother to hide her amusement and glee at the reactions, especially when they lead to a particularly memorable conversation with Pepper one night:

 

“It’s like they don’t believe I can do monogamy! What more do I have—wait. I have an idea. We could—”

 

“No.”

 

“I haven’t even suggested anything yet!”

 

“No. I know what that look means, Tony, because you make that face  every time you’re about to do or suggest something you know I won’t like.”

 

“A face? What face? This is just my natural face, hand to God.”

 

“You’re an atheist.”

 

“...Hand to JARVIS.”

 

A pause, then—

 

“...So, that’s a no on the ‘accidental’ sex tape leak, then?”

 

“Absolutely not!”

 

Tony counts the conversation as a win. After all, she’s never realized Pepper is capable of turning that particular shade of red.

 

_She tries to patch relationships with the loved ones she’d alienated._

 

In the workshop, she devotes hours upon hours to bringing a new AI, FRIDAY, to life. She hopes the AI might one day develop to be for Riri what JARVIS has been for her.

 

Riri and FRIDAY grow together, and Tony pretends not to notice when Riri tries (and fails) to keep the young duo’s own efforts to design Riri an “Iron Man” suit of her own a secret.

 

She can’t _entirely_ help herself, though, and she finds herself leaving tiny corrections and suggestions in Riri’s files that her kid inevitably picks up on.

 

Somehow, though, Riri _does_ manage to keep her university plans from Tony until it comes time to start filling out formal enrollment paperwork.

 

Riri’s a West Coast girl at heart.

 

Tony should have known she’d end up at CalTech.

 

 _(JARVIS, the_ traitor, _agreed to FRIDAY’s request to simply… not mention… that particular application unless Tony explicitly asked.)_

 

Tony manages to feign obligatory MIT-almuna disappointment for all of five seconds before enveloping Riri in an overly-dramatic hug.

 

_She opts to work with SHIELD on occasion, taking on jobs she’s uniquely qualified for._

 

She has an inordinate amount of fun “encouraging” Ross to release the Abomination as part of the Avengers Initiative.

 

Then she buys his favorite bar and has it leveled.

 

You know, just in case the _fuck you, Thaddeus,_ hasn’t already come through clearly enough.

 

She modernizes SHIELD’s woefully outdated transportation technology, designing blueprints for first a new series of quinjets and then what will be SHIELD’s crown jewel: the helicarrier.

 

She buckles down on the rebranding of Stark Industries until few remember that a few years ago, they’d been mocking her and her vision of a “weapons company…. That _doesn’t make weapons!”_

 

High level communications gear and automated security devices help smooth over the company’s relationship with the U.S. Government. Quietly, she reaches out to the U.S. military—the most ruffled feathers of all—and begins working with them on the Exo-Falcon project, which will give America’s pararescue troops literal wings.

 

Coulson remains her primary point of contact with SHIELD. Tony lives by the mantra of “once bitten; twice shy”, but gradually Coulson becomes Agent and the tension between them eases.

 

The construction of Stark Tower, a project that has been in the works for years, begins in earnest. Tony works with engineers and architects by the dozen to entirely revamp the skyscraper’s power system to run solely on reactor tech. Her lobbyists and lawyers work overtime sorting out the legalities of the change that, in effect, turns Stark Industries into an electric service provider, albeit with a coverage zone of a single building in Manhattan.

 

_(For now.)_

 

Riri is approaching adulthood. They skirt around the topic for months until one day, Tony asks—

 

“What are your thoughts on a coming out party?”

 

Riri splutters. Tony continues over the noise—

 

“I was thinking post-twenty-first; any sooner and it’d have to be _dry_ lest I be accused of enabling delinquency and providing adult beverages to underaged parties.”

 

Riri’s expression is comical; Tony doesn’t bother to conceal her amusement and clarifies—

 

“As a Stark, I mean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unsurprisingly, Captain Marvel gave me a bit of a boost in regards to a bit of writer's block I had with a few of the segments of this chapter. You may notice the updated chapter count projection... in an ideal world this fic would be finished before Endgame comes out and Josses my planned ending, but we'll see. (What was I thinking having four WIPs at the same time, honestly...) Anyway, hope this chapter was worth the wait, and happy [Nowruz](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-47643267/nowruz-how-300m-people-celebrate-persian-new-year) everyone~! (:


	4. Cortados and Gelato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.”   
> —Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was outlined before Endgame or Captain Marvel. Anything MCU revealed following Infinity Wars is dubiously canonical at best for the purposes of this AU.
> 
> Much love for my beta, who somehow manages to provide insightful commentary & suggestions on every chapter of this and most of my other fics despite my incredibly erratic my writing schedule.
> 
> Now, this chapter's been a long time coming. Enjoy! <3

...And then there are aliens. Whatever new equilibrium Tony might have found shatters yet again.

 

+++

 

It goes something like this:

 

It’s May 2nd. Nearing on a full year since Tony’s near-death and recovery. Tony and Pepper are in Manhattan, bringing the Stark Tower miniature arc reactor online for the first time.

 

_(“It’s like Christmas but with more… me!”)_

 

While Riri bemoans the fact that the event runs in parallel to midterms week, forcing her to remain in Pasadena, her absence does have its advantages.

 

Both Pepper and Tony have preemptively cleared their schedules for the next few days. All goes according to plan. Tony can taste the happiness in the flutes of champagne Pepper pours. They toast, marking the beginning of an evening that will no doubt be full of countless light and energy based puns as well as... other activities.

 

Or at least, that’s how it should have gone.

 

Instead, there’s the ding of the elevator signalling Agent Coulson’s arrival and—

 

“Y’know, we were having an amazing conversation until you came in all taco blocko and ruined it."

 

—followed immediately by a Look from Pepper and Tony’s indignant response—

 

“C’mon, you already vetoed cunt punt! Work with me here, honey.”

 

—in turn leading to another signature Look from Pepper, one that manages to convey a mix of amused exasperation, reproach tinged with embarrassment and a hint of horror while altogether still coming off as entirely unsurprised.

 

And though Pepper whispers promises of an evening far from ruined by the interruption, they both know the words are little more than wishful optimism.

 

_(Sometimes, there is nothing Tony hates more than being proven right.)_

 

Less than twenty-four hours later, she meets Captain America in Germany to help capture some wannabe Evil Overlord. For a moment, she gets to live what is essentially her ultimate childhood fantasy brought to life.

 

_“Miss Stark.”_

 

_“Captain.”_

 

Reality, as ever, reasserts itself.

 

_“Take off the suit and what are you?”_

 

_“Genius, billionaire, visionary, philanthropist.”_

 

In the years that follow, both will regret harsh words spoken in the heat of the scepter-induced argument.

 

They will never explicitly apologize for it, but the sentiment will come out in a thousand different ways nonetheless, typically far outside the other’s hearing.

 

_(a living legend that lives up to the legend)_

 

_(Earth’s Greatest Defender)_

 

_“If we can’t save the Earth, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.”_

 

+++

 

A portal opens over midtown. A team of strangers come together and fight like a well-oiled machine.

 

_(Could Tony keep this?)_

 

 _(The Avengers as a contemporary incarnation of the Howling Commandos. Someone to stand with in every fight. Someone that_ understood, _in a way that even Rhodey couldn’t.)_

 

Tony’s vaguely-formed fantasies pass unacknowledged.

 

~~_(without even a heartbeat)_ ~~

 

In the end, Tony is still alone.

 

In the end, there’s only this:

 

A nuclear weapon on Tony’s back.

 

A roar in her ears.

 

A call that fails to connect.

 

And a final, sardonic thought:

 

_so much for cutting the wire_

 

+++

 

she

 

enters

 

a

 

portal

 

.

 

~~_(everything is still)_ ~~

 

she

 

lets

 

go

 

.

 

~~_(there is only silence)_ ~~

 

she

 

falls

 

to

 

earth

 

.

 

_~~(lost forever in the Void)~~ _

 

+++

 

The Hulk roars.

 

Tony awakens.

 

A few hours later, Iron Heart lands in New York.

 

+++

 

Riri is working on her midterm for her Intro to Philosophy course that has taken a far more utilitarian bent than she was aiming for when her roommate, Sri, bursts into the room.

 

Before Riri can question her or do much more than take in the wide-eyed, shocked look on Sri’s face, she says—

 

“Forget philo, Riri! Aliens are _literally invading New York right now.”_

 

A thousand calculations run through her mind in that moment.

 

Dad’s in Bhutan. Mom’s in New York.

 

If she leaves right now, if she hops on her bike and breaks every legal limit, she could be in Malibu in an hour. Be in the air fifteen minutes later and in New York City by—

 

Far too late to make any difference one way or another. Likely, it’ll be over before she even makes it to Malibu.

 

_Fuck._

 

Sri drags her from the room. Riri’s phone and computer lay forgotten on her desk. They join the small crowd in the common room, where it seems half the floor is crammed in with eyes glued to the TV.

 

Twenty minutes later, she watches her mom sacrifice herself on live TV. 

 

_There is no one in the room to answer her ringing phone._

 

Just like that, it’s over.

 

Sri is the only person present who has any real idea what Riri’s just lost. Her friend and roommate is already turning towards her, and Riri. Just. Can’t.

 

She flees before anyone else even begins to react.

 

There’s nothing Sri could say anyway.

 

Wallet. Keys. Phone. Unlock to message FRIDAY and—

 

_Missed Call {1}: You Know Who I Am_

 

But no voicemail.

 

A shower of splintered glass forms a halo around her cracked phone.

 

FRIDAY will find her in Malibu. 

 

Riri makes the hour-long drive in twenty-seven minutes and forty seconds.

 

A combination of probably-not-legal repulsor boosters coupled with a world—or at least, the midday Pasadena drivers and/or traffic patrol part of it—collectively on hold makes the trip possible.

 

Not that the presence of a cop with a radar gun would have slowed her down. They’d never catch her unless she let them, and…

 

_To beat this speedrun record, mom’s gonna need—_

 

Iron Heart takes flight forty-five minutes after Riri ~~_Stark_~~ Williams’ mother dies. She doesn’t have a plan. Doesn’t know what she’ll do when she reaches Manhattan. Riri just knows she _needs_ to be there, needs to see for herself, needs to know for sure because this is her _mom,_ she already thought she’d lost her once and—and—

 

Riri’s in no state to be flying solo.

 

_Thank God there’s FRIDAY._

 

Halfway across Ohio, FRIDAY makes contact with JARVIS.

 

_Her mom is alive._

 

The need to be at her mother’s side an hour ago grows exponentially.

 

JARVIS sends coordinates. Her mom, battered and without her suit but _alive,_ meets her on the penthouse balcony.

 

Riri, armor and all, collapses into her mother’s arms a moment later. Mom holds her as she cries.

 

“The balcony disassembler was taken out during the battle, but the one in the workshop is still functional… the rest of the Avengers are downstairs handing off the—well, it’s a long story. If you want to stick around…” Tony offers some time later, trailing off.

 

“I’m not leaving,” Riri interjects. “One question, though.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Who the hell are the Avengers?”

 

Tony laughs.

 

+++

 

“Iron Heart, Avengers. Avengers, Iron Heart.”

 

+++

 

“So. Shawarma?”

 

+++

 

Riri Williams, a.k.a. Iron Heart, a.k.a. Iron Man’s secret protege, makes her debut to relatively little fanfare. What would have been front-page news at any other time is almost a footnote in the wake of aliens invading Manhattan only to be fought off by, amongst others, a supposed Norse god, the Hulk, and a mysteriously resurrected Captain America. Not to mention Iron Man herself.

 

A protege, compared to all that, is hardly news. War Machine exists, after all. It’s no surprise that Tony Stark, the same woman who speaks so passionately about legacy, would have plans in place for the eventuality of her own premature death.

 

The only mystery is in Iron Heart’s identity, because she’s never seen with her faceplate up.

 

There’s plenty of speculation—a long-lost sibling, a Stark Industries employee, another Air Force pilot, or a fellow captive from her time in Afghanistan are among the many increasingly outlandish theories leveled. A few even speculate it’s Pepper Potts, though that particular theory is easily disproved.

 

None suspect a child of Tony’s. Because _no way_ Tony Stark could have managed to hide a pregnancy, let alone an actual child, for more than a week.

 

Not to mention that Iron Heart’s _obviously_ in her mid-to-late twenties at _minimum,_ and the timelines just don’t add up.

 

Funny what a lifetime as Tony Stark, Jim Rhodes, and Grant & Joanne Williams child can do for a young woman’s apparent maturity.

 

As Tony herself puts it:

 

 _“Just don't do anything I would do, and_ definitely _don't do anything I wouldn't do. There's a little gray area in there. That's where you operate. Beyond that...just ask Rhodey.”_

 

Iron Heart sticks around in New York for two weeks after her impromptu introduction to the other Avengers. The first few days, she and Iron Man are all but inseparable, working alongside first responders to clear rubble and rescue injured survivors.

 

When the bodies are largely cleared and the emergency crews give way to the Department of Damage Control, Iron Heart’s public appearances correspondingly dwindle as well.

 

The other Avengers likewise fade into the woodwork. Soon it’s just Riri and Tony in the newly christened Avengers Tower.

 

Air traffic is grounded for days. Even as it gradually picks back up, Manhattan itself sees very little traffic.

 

Ten days after the Battle of New York, Pepper finally returns to the city. 

 

The entire fiasco is capped off by Riri return to California to finish out her first year at university and formally declare her major.

 

_English._

 

JARVIS, mutinous mutineer that he is, helpfully saves the videos of Tony’s definitely-not-excessive reaction. Said reaction may or may not have included hacking into the CalTech Office of the Registrar to formally verify that, yes, Riri Williams is in fact an English major with the course schedule to prove it.

 

“JARVIS I’m not hallucinating, am I? My daughter, currently a student at one of the best technical schools in the _world,_ is getting a degree in the humanities?”

 

“Indeed, Miss.”

 

Tony lets that sink in for a moment longer then grins and says—

 

“Eh. Suppose that’s one thing she can’t just learn in the lab. If this is a precursor to law school, though, we’re gonna have a problem. I can’t allow that kind of evil in my household.”

 

Riri is a bit underwhelmed by her mother’s response.

 

Well, if one ignores the definitely-just-dust-based tears that follow _that_ conversation. It’s not long until Tony’s vindicated in her base suspicions: the move is 100% a prank.

 

That fall, Riri’s updated transcripts reflect she’s aiming for a dual degree in English _and_ Materials Science.

 

_Tony’s so proud._

 

+++

 

Riri has safely returned to university, this time as a Junior spending a year abroad in Italy rather than Pasadena, when the Mandarin begins his violent campaign.

 

Tony’s incredibly grateful that her daughter is half a world away when events begin to spiral out of control.

 

It starts with Happy’s injury.

 

Well. Perhaps that isn't entirely true.

 

It starts at a conference in Bern on New Years Eve at the turn of the millennium.

 

Tony vaguely remembers doing her best to avoid anything that might be mistaken for sobriety throughout the conference.

 

Just before she left Malibu for Switzerland, she got that first Christmas card from her daughter. The daughter she hadn't seen in person since shortly after giving birth.

 

_(“No. Contact.”)_

 

It was her decision, and Tony still believes it to be the right one, but…

 

A part of her hadn't forgiven herself for the choice yet and, past or present, and Tony was never known for her constructive coping strategies.

 

It's not an excuse, but…

 

_("We create our own demons.")_

 

_(But why, why why why why why, are they always Tony’s?)_

 

It starts with one of a hundred entitled wannabe Nice Guys with a dream and delusions of grandeur. She's dealt with countless of his type since assuming public control of Stark Industries.

 

One brush-off of hundreds, and not even the first to try to go after her later and try to knock that _Stark bitch_ down a peg or two. Because Tony just needs a good man to take her in hand, right?

 

Unfair? Perhaps.

 

Tony hasn't believed in fairness since 1989.

 

(If she ever believed at all.)

 

Maybe it starts in Bern for Aldrich Killian, but for Tony?

 

It starts just before Christmas barely six months after she—

 

Since New York.

 

For Tony, it begins with Happy's injury.

 

Tony’s got her textbook case of PTSD to go with the textbook narcissism but somehow, she still has Pepper. She has a daughter safe across the pond. She has nightmares every night and frequent flashbacks. 

 

A perfect compliment to the chill of Afghanistan, she has the utter, impossible stillness of space. 

 

 _In a suit that was never meant to stand up to the vacuum even if she'd perhaps toyed with the idea of a partnership with NASA or going full Elon Musk but better with a moon base or maybe a space fortress for the Avengers if DC doesn't manage to successfully sue her for copyright infringement first even though everyone knows the Avengers are cooler anyways, what with the inarguable advantage of being_ real—

 

_("Never meet your heroes, kid.")_

 

It starts with Happy and a brash declaration made on live television.

 

Twelve hours later, Tony is missing-presumed-dead and breaking into the garage of a kid armed with a potato gun.

 

+++

 

Events escalate, until it eventually comes to this:

 

Tony and Rhodey, armorless on a desperate mission to save the President.

 

Tony’s just summoned the dozens of suits she’s created in PTSD-fueled binges since New York when another, all-too-familiar suit of armor arrives on the scene.

 

Grey, black, and hot pink panels bordered by golden joints form the palette for this latest Iron Heart armor. The suit embraces the implied aesthetic whole-heartedly. It comes complete with an off-center arc reactor, a rounded-V power source on her forehead, and a faceplate FRIDAY claims qualifies as a cubist interpretation of a heart.

 

“I,” Riri proclaims even as she repulsors the first of many Extremis-enhanced enemies, “Am getting really. Fucking. Tired—” Another blast. “—of your whole I’m-dead-but-not-really bullshit, mom!”

 

The ensuing battle is brutal.

 

As the dust settles from Tony’s dramatic post-battle Clean Slate Protocol, a few things happen in quick succession.

 

There’s the hug, Pepper and Tony and Riri clinging to one one in a moment of adrenaline and high emotions.

 

There’s Rhodey, standing off to the side until Riri looks up and promptly drags him into the impromptu group hug.

 

There’s the inevitable back-and-forth banter when they finally separate. Tony tries her best to pretend the whole _emotions_ thing didn’t just happen via terrible puns about how _hot_ her girlfriend is now. 

 

There’s Rhodey and Riri’s commiseratory shared look as the couple soon go from arguing to kissing in two seconds flat.

 

_“Dad, guess what their couple’s name is?”_

 

Then, a moment later, the gleeful whisper of—

 

_“Pepperony!”_

 

Riri pulls out her phone to show Dad some of the memes she’s been saving up for just such an occasion, only to get distracted because—

 

“Uh, guys? Just a heads up, but #IronFam is currently trending on Twitter. I think our cover might be blown.”

 

That announcement, at least, manages to separate the lovebirds from their increasingly-heated “one or both of us almost _died”_ makeout session. And just because Riri _knows_ sex tapes of her mom’s… more adventurous… days probably still exist somewhere on the internet doesn’t mean she wants scenes reminiscent of such things in her memories.

 

Pepper’s had a plan in place for Riri’s inevitable “outing” as a Stark since December 2001. She promptly appropriates Tony’s phone from her back pocket—entirely ignoring Tony’s squawked protests once she realizes the grope is actually a phone-snatching operation—and is on the phone with Tony’s personal PR team within seconds coordinating logistics.

 

The calls come to a premature end when Pepper accidently melts the phone three minutes later in response to something she hears at the other end of the line, but…

 

Well. At least Tony now knows that Pepper’s strain of Extremis produces bursts of heat in excess of 200 degrees Celsius. A.K.A. 400 degrees Fahrenheit. A.K.A. the melting point of a StarkPhone.

 

Tony’ll work on that shortcoming for future releases. Never know when you need to make a phone call while literally on fire.

 

_I mean, how else does one get ahold of the fire department?_

 

Not everyone has a DUM-E on lab safety like Tony.

 

+++

 

So now, the world knows that Iron Heart is Riri and that Riri was born a Stark. Riri’s anonymity is gone, but since they’ve been expecting that secret to somehow slip since New York, it’s not a huge loss.

 

They’ve been discussing Riri’s potential unmasking after she graduates in a year and a half anyway. Moving up the timeline after the “Iron Fam” literally saves the President’s life is probably one of the better ways that events could have played out, all things considered. 

 

Riri is far better equipped for the sudden media spotlight than Tony ever was. She’s a grown, almost-twenty-year-old woman. Her life is not the perfect, care-free bliss a younger Tony imagined for her, but…

 

Riri got a chance to grow up without the world watching her every move.

 

Ultimately, that’s all Tony ever wanted for her.

 

_(Bonus, with Riri’s existence now common knowledge, #IronFam becomes the go-to handle for any and all Stark, Williams, Rhodes, and Potts related gossip.)_

 

 _(That will never_ not _make Tony’s day.)_

 

Bruce Banner shows up not long after the press dies down in the wake of Killian and his cohort. Tony calls, almost-but-not-quite begging he come in from the cold and back to the States long enough to render Pepper’s strain of Extremis inert.

 

Several caffeine-fueled days of hypothesizing, experimentation, and simulations later, they are able to crack the code with a sufficient degree of certainty to begin live testing.

 

Sometime during the waiting game that follows, the tension between the two of them settles into comradery and, tentatively, friendship. 

 

Then Pepper is cured. Tony blames the rush of endorphins for what happens next:

 

She reaches out.

 

Tony spends hours talking once she gets going, unloading years of pent-up stress, fear, and insecurity to a third party that wasn’t involved in the bulk of the drama described. Bruce is silent but for the occasional non-verbal cue that he’s still listening, and—

 

Honestly, Tony’s not sure _anyone_ has ever done that for her before.

 

Just listened.

 

Later, Tony will consider how pathetic it is that she mistakes what must have been the shifting and occasional murmurs of sleep for actual attention.

 

(That she mistook Dr. Banner’s desire to save lives for something so shallow as a personal connection with Tony and her family.)

 

_"You know, I'm not that kind of doctor."_

 

+++

 

Then aliens. 

 

_Again._

 

This time in London. The first Tony hears of it is when her daughter—the one that’s meant to be _studying abroad in Italy far away from any superhero related shenanigans, so help me JARVIS_ —calls her on a personal line in the middle of the night.

 

“Don’t freak out,” Riri starts. As if that’s not enough to jolt Tony fully into awareness in and of itself. Especially when a moment later, she gets a ping from JARVIS notifying her that the Iron Heart suit has been deployed.

 

“Why am I immediately concerned.”

 

 Beside Tony, Pepper is stirring. Her girlfriend blinks sleepy eyes open, reaching out to Tony in a half-aware, protesting gesture.

 

“...Well,” Riri says, “there may be a thing. In London. With Thor? And aliens?”

 

Tony stills, sucking in a sharp breath.

 

Like Tony, Pepper is now fully awake.

 

“I don’t know the details yet. FRIDAY’s forwarding me live video from randos on-site. Looks like they’re trashing Cambridge right now. And to think I almost went there instead of Rome! I’ll be on-site in twenty with the upgrades.”

 

JARVIS, bless him, is already tapping into the same lines and projecting the film onto nearby screens for Tony.

 

+++

 

Captain America is the next of the Avengers to return to prime time in a big way when he briefly becomes a wanted terrorist that November.

 

That SHIELD is revealed to be HYDRA less than a week later is just the cherry on top of a shit sundae.

 

 _Why didn’t he call me?_ Tony doesn’t ask.

 

_(Why would he? Technically, she failed to reach out first when she didn’t call Captain America in on a rescue mission of the POTUS, right?)_

 

~~_(Why steal what she would freely give unless…)_ ~~

 

+++

 

With SHIELD gone, it falls to the Avengers to come together once more, this time to fight HYDRA rather than aliens.

 

They—the original six, the ones that were involved in the Battle of New York—become a team in truth for the first time.

 

Not a family, because Tony already has that in this life. But—

 

Perhaps still a bit like a family, regardless. Steve, the crotchety old man who’s neither crotchety nor old except when trolling unsuspecting journalists. Thor, the eccentric Uncle that _has_ to be on steroids because _no one_ is that swole naturally. Natasha and Clint, the entirely-platonic life partners that show up to the family reunion one year with nary an explanation as to where they’ve been or what they’ve been up to for the past decade, and _no don’t say Budapest again, you know that was in the SHIELD data I scrubbed and you know I know that Hungarian standing orders are_ still _to shoot on sight after what you pulled in ‘07._

 

Banner’s the long-suffering father, leaving Tony as—what else but—the mother.

 

#IronMom makes a resurgence on Twitter the first time one of the others—Clint, predictably, but only because _Steve_ egged him on, the traitor—drops a _“Mo-om”_ within range of a listening recorder.

 

“How come you aren’t Iron Dad?!” Tony moans to Rhodey one afternoon after enduring _hours_ of Harley—the potato-gun kid somehow turned her daughter’s pseudo-kid-brother-slash-minion— and Riri’s increasingly absurd plays on the meme. Their unfortunate on-going group text battle is being fought exclusively with Twitter-appropriated #IronMom one-liners.

 

_(Tony doesn’t play favorites, but Harley’s totally kicking Riri’s ass despite the almost-decade he lacks in seniority.)_

 

“Because I, unlike you, am still cool?”

 

“Honey-bear you were never cool.”

 

“It’s true dad, you weren’t,” Riri agrees.

 

“...Besides, Pep might get jealous,” Tony continues.

 

“Jealous of people who flying around in tin cans risking life and limb?” Pepper, who until then stayed out of the conversation in favor of reading through paperwork on a glass tablet, cuts in.

 

“Hey! Don’t talk about my baby like that!”

 

“Since when am I your baby?”

 

“Since I literally pushed you out of my vagina? Except I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about your bouncing baby brother my girlfriend just trash-talked!”

 

“Oookay. That’s it. I’mma go keep FRIDAY company while she—”

 

“Optimizes start-up system and suit recall routines,” the AI in question chimes in helpfully from Riri’s watch.

 

“Yeah. That. The v3 won’t optimize itself. And no, mom, you’re not invited.”

 

“Not even if I bring Hawaiian pizza?”

 

“...Okay, maybe then. But my shop’s on lockdown until I see the proof in the pudding.”

 

“You’ve been spending too much time talking to Cap lately.”

 

“Ain’t he the bee’s knees, though?”

 

Tony’s laughter echoes through the penthouse.

 

+++

 

Riri’s on track to graduate in June with honors and an additional minor in Control and Dynamical Systems. Technically, the Materials Science portion of her undergraduate degree is awarded in the Winter Term, but what with… everything else going on… she opted to walk in June with the remainder of her class.

 

It just figures, really, that the world promptly goes to hell yet again on May 2nd, 2015. 

 

_(Just what is it about that day?)_

 

This time, the date falls on the Saturday before the official start of spring midterms.

 

In the days that follow, finishing her English degree and beginning her graduate studies in Materials Science is the least of Riri’s concerns.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know especially if you think I need to tag for something that I didn't! (:


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